To say that the existence of the state is, in the mainstream, uncontroversial would be something of an understatement. While the precise individuals who form the state and the specific acts that they choose to do with state power often attract controversy, the existence and sustenance of the state itself is deemed to be essential for not only a functioning and orderly society (such as that which could be provided by a so-called “night watchman” state) but also to contribute, or even to cause, the economic and cultural progression of that society. This belief has become even more potent since the state, sometime in the twentieth century, became endowed with so-called “democratic legitimacy”, i.e. it is supposed to be run by representatives chosen by the people for the people.

Let us run through some of the uncontroversial and supposedly necessary aspects of the state that are barely questioned by anyone today.

First, the state possesses a territorial monopoly of the legitimised use of the initiation of force and violence. The state alone is permitted to fund itself not through voluntary exchange but through compulsory levy (i.e. taxation); people are required to pay to the state that which the state says they should pay regardless of the “service” that they receive from the state in return. The state, further, is permitted to confiscate the legitimately earned wealth and property of individuals and to hand it to other individuals in order to achieve so-called “social justice” and a reduced inequality of wealth and income. Further, the state may use this legitimised force to ban certain uses of one’s own property that in no way interferes with the person or property of anyone else. It may also use this force to compel individuals to deal with their property in certain ways specified by the state, usually at one’s own expense – a power of the state that is euphemised by the term “regulation”.

Second, the state alone is tasked with maintaining law and order and the protection of the person and property of individuals from criminals. The possession and trade of goods and services to enable individuals to accomplish this themselves – such as personal firearms – is increasingly restricted by the state to the extent that such possession or trade itself becomes a crime, even if the intent is simply to prevent criminal acts against oneself. You are therefore utterly reliant upon the state for your own protection and, moreover, you are defenceless against the state when its employees aggress against you. Nevertheless this does not prevent the state from requiring private organisations to police the populace on its behalf – such as in the collection of taxes from payrolls and the requirements of banks and other financial institutions to report on the transactions of their customers.

Third, should the state fail to maintain law and order and to protect your property from criminals, it is then the state to whom you must turn if you want a redress. For the state also enjoys over its territory the privilege of being the sole provider of the dispensation of justice in conflicts between parties, including in conflicts which involve itself. This takes place not just in state run court houses refereed by state employed judges but also (when the state or some of its members have been seen to cause an incident that results in public outrage) in so-called “independent public enquiries”. These are undertaken by a different employee (or retired employee) of the state and the funding still flows from state coffers so there is no wonder why these are almost always written off by the general public as a whitewash.

Fourth, the state alone is tasked with providing so-called “national defence” and securing the state’s borders. Although the restriction of civil liberties in the face of either a real or imagined threat against the state’s sovereignty by a foreign invader is not uncontroversial, it is hardly new and is, in fact, a hallmark of every war into which the state drags its people. More commonly, however, the state may prevent foreign visitors from entering the territory of the state even if domestic private property owners have invited them. People who wish to come to the state’s territory to create jobs and wealth, or simply those who wish to work, are forcibly restricted by the state, even if a domestic employer is willing to hire them. The state also controls, by force, the flow of trade across its borders and imposes tariffs and other restrictions on the movement of goods, regardless of whether a domestic individual or entity wishes to conduct peaceful trade with a foreigner.

Fifth, the state alone is permitted to print and issue currency in the form of paper money or electronic credits to the extent that it may create this money and use it to buy goods and services for itself without having worked to create any wealth in the first place. Other people who do this are labelled as “counterfeiters” and are subject to the full brunt of the state’s forceful retaliation. Such a power to create money is bound only by the economic consequences of price inflation and credit expansion but it permits the state to fund and grow its activities without resorting to increased taxation, instead robbing the domestic population of the purchasing power of the existing notes that they hold.

Sixth, the state forcibly maintains a monopoly over transportation networks such as roads, highways, railways and airports. If they are not nationalised outright, the state frequently contracts out the provision of other supposedly “essential” industries such as healthcare and the supply of utilities such as gas, electricity and water under the rubric of “privatisation”, yet it maintains a tight control over these industries to the extent that they are little more than a state dominated oligarchy.

Seventh, the state tasks itself with the “education” of the children who are born and/or raised within the state’s territory, mandating, through the threat of punishment, attendance at certain ages dictated by the state, regardless of what children may prefer to be doing or better at doing. The state employs the teachers, sets the curriculum, determines the standards to be achieved through examination (i.e. sets the grades) and is responsible for inspecting its own schools and institutions. Private education is possible but, apart from being monitored closely by the state, is nearly always prohibitively expensive and thus is seen, with some resentment, as being the preserve of the wealthy and privileged. Thus the majority of people have little choice but to turn to the state to provide the education of their children. Furthermore, the state takes it upon itself to interfere in the general upbringing of children, with state run schools often tasked with policing parents and dispensing lessons such as “citizenship” and “personal, social and health” education in order to make up for supposed parental shortfalls.

Finally, the state is supposed to protect us and to provide for us in our hour of need – such as if we lose our job or when we retire. State provided retirement benefits are little more than a giant Ponzi scheme. Funds confiscated by taxation from the earliest “beneficiaries” to provide for their retirement were not saved and invested by the state; rather, they were consumed in current expenditure. Instead, it is the current tax confiscations of younger generations that pay for the pensions of today’s retirees. The state forcibly prevents private individuals and companies from engaging in such a scheme as it ultimately results in collapse and losses for the later investors, and those that do offer such a service are thrown by the state in jail. The state’s own scheme is, as we are beginning to see today, susceptible to such a fate yet the state exempts itself from having to follow its own rules.

No doubt readers can think of many other “uncontroversial” aspects of the state that are held dear among mainstream views. Each of these aspects could be demolished in separate, longer treatments and many libertarian writers have, of course, done just that. What we wish to do here, however, is to ask our fellow citizens who do not counter these “functions” of the state a very simple question: if you accept with gladness or even celebrate these aspects of the state that we have just listed, can you imagine also permitting a private corporation to do the same things that the state does? Can you imagine a private corporation being able to initiate the use of force and violence against other people? Would a private company be allowed to force you to do what it wants with your own property? If you get into a contractual dispute with AT&T should AT&T be allowed to judge the outcome of the conflict? If American Airlines assaults or kills your family should American Airlines sit both in the dock and on the judge’s throne? Should Microsoft be tasked with national defence and arm itself with nuclear weapons? Should McDonalds be able to tell you which foreigners and which goods and services can cross the border even if you want them to come and visit you? Could we imagine a world in which Google or Walmart can print paper money and force people to accept it in return for goods and services? Or a world in which Facebook builds all of the roads and runs all of our utilities? Would it be possible for, say, Apple to be able to force our children to attend its schools? And finally, should we allow Bank of America or J P Morgan Chase to force investors to participate in Ponzi schemes? Most lay persons are likely to recoil in horror at the thought of any private corporation being able to do all of these things. Yet, bizarrely, they either accept or defend the fact that the state should participate in these activities.

One likely retort to this is that the state is supposed to govern for “the people” whereas companies are interested in making profits for their shareholders. Indeed, the state uses its self-proclaimed subservient and altruistic nature to exempt itself from all of the proper behaviour that is required of private citizens, who are supposed to be interested in only their own gain. While it is true that companies are primarily interested in making a return for their shareholders (why else would the shareholders have invested in the business?), it is also true that companies can only achieve these profits by serving the needs of their customers. It is the customers who decide, through their choices to spend or not to spend money with the corporation, whether those profits are made. In any case, however, we might point out that an odious act does not transform into a good one simply on account of for whom it is done. If I steal your money this act is rightly viewed as wrong, regardless of whether I intend to keep the money for myself or whether I intend to give it to someone else who may, in my opinion, “need” it more than you do. Similarly, therefore, if the state confiscates your money through taxation and distributes it via the welfare state the fact that it goes to “the people” makes this act no more moral than if the bureaucrats kept it all themselves (which, of course, they often do – not only are the administrative costs of the welfare state frequently underestimated but most of the money disappears into the hands of the state’s favoured contractors and suppliers rather than directly into the bank accounts of the poor). Moreover, we don’t even have to go so far as to cite strictly moral or immoral acts to illustrate this point. Monopolies, for example, are viewed as being bad because they tend to reduce quality and raise costs over time; this fact does not change simply because it is the state that runs a monopoly over say, healthcare, rather than a private corporation.

Another likely response to our question is that the state is under the supposed “democratic control” of the people and that if the state uses these powers “illegitimately” or irresponsibly then they will be booted out at the ballot box. Apart from the fact that, again, an illicit act does not become moral simply on account of who controls those who are doing it, a citizen has the right of voting between a bare handful of carefully selected and screened candidates only once every four or five years. Moreover, a person cannot choose with any specificity which policies and manifestos to support. Rather, he has to throw what little weight he has behind a single candidate (or party) and all of that candidate’s stances on a wide spectrum of issues, from whether we should continue funding wars in the Middle East down to whether a person may light up a joint in his own home. And once elected the successful candidate can simply abandon whatever promises he made in return for your vote straight after. As if that wasn’t bad enough, what if your preferred candidate does not get elected? You still have to suffer the implementation of the odious policies of an alternative candidate whom you may utterly despise. With a private corporation, however, you can choose to vote or to not vote for them with your wallet every single minute of every single day. You don’t have to wait for a few years if you want to switch from Tesco to Sainsbury. Moreover these choices are very specific. If you change your grocery supplier you are not also changing your telephone provider. If you ditch Ryanair and start flying EasyJet you can still get your clothes from Debenhams. If a corporation takes your vote, i.e. your money, then breaks its promises it made before you handed it over it is called “breach of contract” and for this the company can be sued. And finally, your choice to shop at Sainsbury’s or Tesco is not dependent upon a majority of other people wishing to do so – both are able to trade regardless of whether they are supported by a majority of consumers.

What we can take from all of this is that if a private corporation possessed every single right and function of the state except the power to tax and demand your patronage, then you would have more control over it than you do over the state. The situation we have produced, therefore, is, on the one hand, a society of corporations over whom each individual has a high degree of control yet which are required to abide by all of the laws and at least a basic code of morality, and on the other hand a state which no one can control yet can, for the most part, do whatever it likes. It seems to me that if we are to suffer the illicit and illegitimate powers of the state at all they would be far safer in the hands of a private corporation rather than the state.

Of course our goal is that nobody should have the right to carry on these acts that we outlined in the first part of this essay – that they should be illegal regardless of who does them and in whose name. No one should have the power to tax, to confiscate the income and wealth of other people; no one should be able to print money; nobody should be able to arm themselves with all manner of horrific weaponry while forcibly disarming everyone else; and no one should be able to run a Ponzi scheme. When you take all of these characteristics of the state and ask yourself what life would be like if anyone else was allowed to do them, you rightly begin to shudder with fear. So why should we ennoble the state with the dubious privilege of being able to do them?

Hopefully what we have outlined here is a useful point with which a libertarian can turn a debate with a statist or state-biased lay person, and to cause that person to reconsider either his active or his tacit support for the state and its actions.

The virtue of altruism is held in immeasurably high esteem in our society today. Selfless benevolence at one’s own expense is regarded as the pinnacle of human endeavours, with societies and cultures often reserving their most coveted honours and elevations for people who have apparently undergone acts of selflessness and generosity. Contrary to mainstream thought (and contrary to the thought of some free market proponents), there is nothing in either libertarianism or free market economics that disputes this view. It is true that, strictly speaking libertarians qua libertarians neither promote nor condone any voluntary act; rather, they simply take the position that such acts should not be countered with violent repressions. Whether such acts are good in and of themselves is another matter. Further, free market economists will note that although voluntary exchanges create net wealth (including gift giving in which the donor never “loses” as such but, rather, gains a psychic profit that, to him, must be worth more than what he gave up), there is no part of their science in and of itself that compels them to promote or encourage giving any more than they are required to promote any other type of exchange (although economists may of course note also that increased wealth creation usually goes hand in hand with increased generosity). Nevertheless, as a private individual, it is possible for libertarians and free market economists to regard such specific, overt acts of kindness and generosity – especially those that cause the donor to incur at least the risk of a great material cost, such as wading into a strong river to save a drowning child – as worthy of praise and adulation and that the congratulation of such individuals is far from being out of place.

On the other hand, mainstream thought has extrapolated, erroneously, from these individual, voluntary acts the conclusion that economic progress, the vanquishing of poverty and the path towards a greater and better society are themselves dependent upon altruism and self-sacrifice to the extent that these virtues can cohere into a social system – a system, that is of course, managed by state fiat, such as the welfare state. This belief is dependent upon a further error which is that, in the free market order, the fundamental interests of each member of society are pitted against each other and that one person’s profit must automatically transform into another person’s loss. In other words, the profit and loss system results in benefits to the few (or, at most, some) at the expense of the many. From this incorrect assumption one naturally leads to the conclusions that the only way to benefit more or the many is if these profits (or the wealth that is possessed by the few) are turned over to the many. It is these conclusions with which libertarians and, in particular, free market economists disagree. If that was not bad enough, however, we shall also see that the implementation of systemic methods of wealth distribution is, in fact, completely antithetical to and destructive of altruism and generosity.

This error is similar in nature to another error encountered in mainstream economics – that of supposed shortages of “demand” on an economy-wide sale. In the particular situation of an individual firm or industry, a withdrawal of demand from the firm’s products will result in a slowdown of business for that firm. If the firm is to recover then it is obvious that a recovery of demand for its goods and services is necessary. However, from this entirely correct conclusion regarding a particular circumstance is extrapolated the utterly false conclusion that increases in demand must benefit the economy as a whole. Or, in other words, that where there is a general economic malaise the effective response is to encourage a general increase in demand for an alleged “glut” of supply. As we know from Say’s Law, however, demand and supply are opposite sides of the same coin – the demand for one product is formed by the supply of another. Therefore, one cannot increase general demand without also increasing general supply, i.e. the production of real products. Simply printing more money or lowering borrowing costs does nothing to increase demand; it simply raises the prices of what is already available and shifts the purchasing power over these existing resources from the last or later recipients of the new money to the first or earlier recipients. The real problem in an economic bust is a relative glut of some products, namely, capital goods that are further up the chain of production, and a relative shortage of other products, namely consumer goods and capital goods lower down the chain of production. So too is a similarly false conclusion drawn with regards to altruism and self-sacrifice – that what may be good in one, specific situation is good for society as a whole; and so good, moreover, that the state should systematically force us all towards altruism and self-sacrifice. Let us now explore the reasons why this is false.

First, with particular, individual acts of kindness or generosity it is possible for a bystander to appreciate and form judgments concerning the variables that are weighed in the consideration of whether someone has performed a virtuous deed; the initial helplessness or the “worthiness” of the recipient; the magnitude of relief that the voluntary act of kindness provides; and the magnitude of at least the material cost to the donor. One can therefore form a personal judgment, based on empathy, of the positions of the particular giving and receiving parties as to whether the act of altruism is a good thing. On an economy-wide scale in a society of tens (may be even hundreds) of millions of people, however, it is not possible to form such judgments with any degree of specificity, and much blunter tools such as “income” are needed in order to judge who should be donors and who should be recipients. But such blunt tools tell us nothing about why, for example, someone’s income is low, whose responsibility it is and who should bear the burden of doing something about it. Moreover, there is no reason to suppose that someone who has a “high” income necessarily has cash to spare and does not have other commitments for those funds which the government wishes to redistribute – commitments which, even to others, may be valued as worthy, such as investing in his children’s education.

Second, in the long run massive transfers of wealth from the class of “haves” to the class of “have nots” does not benefit the latter in the long run. One of the most serious misconceptions concerning the ownership of wealth is that one must own it in order to benefit from it and thus only divesting wealth from those that have it and giving it to those that do not have it can ameliorate the plight of the poor and needy. What benefits the latter, however, is not the turning over of wealth to their hands so that it can be consumed and lost forever. Rather, what really hauls the poor up from the depths of despair is the investment of wealth in capital goods which are then able to produce more and more products and services at increasingly lower prices so that the poor can afford to buy them. We can illustrate this by adapting a well-known proverb: give a man a fish and he will feed himself for a day; invest that fish in a business that will produce fishing tackle that the man can afford and he will feed himself for a lifetime. The man in need never owned that original fish nor the capital goods that were produced from consuming it, yet it is clear that his life benefitted from its investment in a productive enterprise to a far greater extent than if he had ever gotten his hands on it directly.

Third, the very motivation towards altruism is most often dependent upon a close family or friendly relationship between donor and recipient where the welfare of the latter is of great importance to the former. Such a motivation is destroyed when your money disappears into a bureaucrat-run black hole. The result is that, as people lose their ability to spend their money in ways that they want, the motivation to producing wealth in the first place is destroyed. There is therefore less wealth to distribute anyway. Critics may, of course, argue that such a result is owing to the alleged “selfish” and self-centred nature of humans and that surely we – i.e. the state – has a duty to attempt to overcome this? There are at least two responses to this. First, it is part of the natural condition of humans that the primary ends and values that they hold are concerned with their immediate environment – that is, the welfare of themselves, their friends and their family; in other words, people whom they know, care about and have the ability to form empathetic judgments about. It is the stimuli from these sources that most potently determine our desires and choices. Everything else that goes on in the world is, for the most part, out of sight and out of mind, or at least very remote and can be brought to us only electronically through the media. But one does not even need to go that far, as most people are unlikely to even be able to appreciate the conditions, needs and desires of people in another neighbourhood in the same town – or even in the same street. People do, of course, devote themselves to causes that aim to help people far away about whom they may know very little; but these are specific causes towards which one may have a specific motivation. Wealth redistribution, however, aims at ameliorating hundreds, if not thousands of afflictions across many millions of faceless people. It is simply not possible for any human to form empathetic appreciations of all of those individual circumstances and, thus, neither will they be able to appreciate any kind of amelioration of these afflictions if they happen hundreds of miles away (this is before we get into any discussion of whether wealth distribution does, in fact, accomplish such ameliorations). Therefore, it is not possible for the typical human to motivate himself towards striding towards providing for a giant pot that aims to solve these problems, or at least not to the same degree he motivates himself towards providing for ends of his choosing. Moreover, we may ask whether a person with the ruddiest bleeding heart would, if it came to a choice, prefer to work towards contributing to the tax pot ahead of, say, caring for his sick and dying mother. Second, the very fact that wealth redistribution is forced (by the threat of imprisonment) rather than undertaken voluntarily does nothing to promote altruism in any way at all. Indeed, we might say that genuine altruism and selfless behaviour worthy of praise and recognition relies upon the fact that someone could have chosen, freely, to have done something “worthy” with his time and money. When I am forced to hand over my money, however, I have in no way “behaved” altruistically; in fact I haven’t really “behaved” at all – rather the money was simply taken from me. Further, rather encouraging any feelings of generosity the forced appropriation of my property it is likely to make me bitter and resentful and, moreover, to curb any desire to be generous with the remainder of the funds that I have left. To make matters worse, the welfare state does not leave the recipients of welfare spending as kindly and grateful beneficiaries who feel they were lucky to have avoided misfortune. Rather, the welfare state begets a sense of “entitlement” and dissolution of personal responsibility – that it is the state’s responsibility to provide for their needs and that they have a right to the state’s assistance. Ironically, therefore, the welfare state itself increases antagonism and selfishness rather than promoting their antitheses.

The attitude of selfless altruism can also be seen also in the elevation of those who devote themselves to so-called “public service” above those who compete in the allegedly greedy and grubby business of the private marketplace. Although positive views of politicians have soured considerably in the past generation, it is still widely believed that private industry is where people go to make lots of money to keep for themselves, while those who seek public office shun such squalid and base motivations and, with their visions of a “greater” society, can almost single-handedly make everyone better off without a thought of any benefit to themselves. Indeed, to the present author, it beggars belief that people are gullibly hypnotised by the illusion that all of their hopes and dreams are dependent upon a tiny minority, or even (when you witness the almost messianic reverence devoted to presidential candidates) a single person out of a society of millions gaining a job ahead of somebody else. It is in no doubt true, of course, that many people seek to enter politics with the desire, albeit the naïve one, to help people and to improve society. It may also be true that they could have amassed greater private fortunes by seeking employment in the private sector. Nevertheless, all political accomplishments (other than the few and far between measures that seek to roll back the interference of the state) necessarily produce a negative sum result – negative because what is given by government to one set of people must be taken by government from another, minus a cut to pay the salaries of the politicians and bureaucrats. This is before we consider the destruction of the incentives to create wealth that we outlined above. Even if, therefore, we stretched credulity and viewed politicians as truly angelic and selfless they would still not accomplish anything that would produce a net gain to society.

It is not the aim of our discussion here to suggest that a society distinguished by capitalism and free enterprise would suddenly create some kind of utopia where rank selfishness is without any negative consequences. Rather, it is simply to point out that, in the long run, the vanquishing of poverty is achieved by the investment of more capital goods in order to make more products affordable to people with the existing money that they earn themselves; not through giving them more money that is earned by and forcibly confiscated from somebody else. In such a society the high incidence of people needing the help of others would be prevented, not just cured. Nevertheless we might also note that it is a society that is highly prosperous and without a systematic welfare state that encourages rather than obliterates charitable endeavours. Overwhelmingly this is because people simply have more to give – it is no great mystery as to why most of the world’s great charitable foundations and societies originated in the nineteenth century, the era of the relatively most capitalistic progress and the least intervention by a formal welfare state. Ironically, it is the welfare state that has squeezed out private charity and genuine altruism from having any mainstream role in society. Additionally, however, in the absence of a compulsory so-called “social safety net” people rely on maintaining good relationships based on trust, reliability and selflessness with family and friends precisely so that they may be there for each other to cushion the consequences of the occasional unforeseen circumstance. Far from provoking any atomistic and individualistic existence freedom promotes and encourages a strong community and family spirit. If the virtue of altruism is to be nurtured then there cannot be a better place for it than there.